Why do people listen to or make music? Why do we read books and watch shows or plays? Why don't we just wake up every morning, go to work, then return home and sit there in silence until bed and repeat the process until one can no longer walk? Why are you so concerned with what other people do? Is someone holding you at gunpoint until you go on a fox hunt or celebrate Christmas with them? No? Then don't worry about what other people do. You'll be happier and live longer.

I suppose an answer could be, it's human nature to have not only traditional (first-person or actual) nostalgia from things one literally experienced before, but also "second-hand" or "generational" nostalgia (knowledge of what one's parents and grandparents or "people" used to do one, two, maybe many more generations ago and as a result develop a deep and insatiable curiosity towards what those just like us used to do [sometimes not that very] long ago).

Sure, some traditions were better off falling out of favor and popularity. Those that don't, and that don't seem to harm anyone who doesn't willfully participate, shouldn't be any of your concern. You're not your brother's keeper. Certainly not in the context of random people you've never met or who otherwise have the courtesy not to subject your life and habits to the scrutiny of a proverbial microscope.

Also, vote for this as a Lounge topic. (Unless OP beefs it up substantially)

Can you make the case that an appeal to reason yields better results than an appeal to tradition, not only on an individual level, but also on a societal level?

Yes.

Alright, go for it!

It isn't that it necessarily does. That would be the same fallacy as the appeal to tradition fallacy. It is that you should not automatically take tradition as proof in itself that something should stay the way it is.

Upon inspection it might well be that keeping a tradition is the best course of action, or inaction, but reason must evaluate the options to decide that, not just deciding that choice, or lack of, is right just because it has been like that up to the present point.

Example: Claim: It is better not to kill people because the bible says so.

We can agree generally it is conisdered right not to kill people, but not just because the bible says so. We can evaluate that it is wrong to kill as killing is wrong for whatever humanitarian reasons we choose. The bible just happens to agree.

Ok that's a more nuanced position already.

Let me present you two other possible problems with reason alone re-evaluating traditions.

One, people are to some extend creatures of habit, and at least in part formed by the traditions they are inculcated in... and will have trouble changing. Constant and rapid cycling through traditions might be bad for that reason alone, it risks creating anomie.

Two, I doubt a lot of people are really able to think through all first, second and third order effects of a certain tradition by reason alone. Often the effects of a tradition play out over multiple generations, and it's actually really hard to accurately and completely assess them without the benefit of experience over longer periods of time.